Interview: Light Once Lost Releases New EP 'What Doesn't Steal You'

Light Once Lost started as a side project. At what point did it stop feeling like one?

It stopped feeling like one once all of my other music ventures ended right around the same time in 2024. All within the span of a few months I had stopped touring and left my main band, so I had nothing but time. It was at this time that I had had a conversation with a good friend of mine who said I should give Light Once Lost an honest shot. So that’s what I did. It was soon after writing Specific Fears that I knew this was what I wanted to do full time. 

The EP deals with grief and uncertainty. Was it difficult to sit with those themes over the course of making a full record? -It was definitely difficult, but it was a theme that I was very familiar with at this point. The whole project of the band started as a response to loss and grief, so most of the subject matter was enveloped within it whether I wanted it to be or not. Though the thematic material is heavy, it is a little rewarding and enlightening to express it through the art. It allows the pain to be transformed into something positive and opens up a conversation to listeners who share similar experiences. 

You wrote and performed almost everything yourself. Is that a control thing, or more about the intimacy of the material?

I’d say it’s a little bit of both. Though it was nice to have control over mostly everything on the record to some degree, it really was because of how personal the material was to me. I had written and recorded all the demos by myself, written all the lyrics myself, so it only made sense to perform most everything by myself. I’m also quite the perfectionist when it comes to my music, so I knew that the only person who was going to accurately portray my art was myself. That being said, I collaborated more with different people on this record than I previously had really in any music venture. It was people like Chris and Clayton who really helped bring this record to life in more ways than I could’ve on my own.

You recorded in Van Nuys and Pasadena with Christopher Dwyer and Clayton Stevens. What did they bring to the project that you couldn't have got on your own?

Both Chris and Clayton are good friends of mine and have been playing music together for some time, so we already had a great rapport and understanding of each other’s strengths. Aside from drumming on the record, Chris recorded and mixed the whole thing. He has a very intrinsic ear for the style that I was trying to emulate and really had a great approach to make everything sound as organic as possible. Clayton’s songwriting credibility really needs no introduction or explanation, and that was where he helped significantly. He took the demos that I presented to them and really breathed new life into them. Whether it was arrangements, throwing parts in where they were needed, taking parts out when necessary, or continually reminding me of musical and emotional intentionality, he was always a litmus test to me of whether a song was complete or not. 

You've cited The National, Radiohead and Interpol as reference points. What is it about that sound that felt right for what you were trying to say?

I think the broad overview of all of those bands is their emotional capacity that they contain in their material. The National and Interpol really contain the sense of buoyancy in their instrumentation while juxtaposing that with the depth of their lyrics. I’ve always found inspiration in that balance of tone within my own writing. Radiohead is always the standard to how I try to portray my performances vocally. I really came into my own after hearing Thom’s voice, and I hold him as the benchmark in terms of vocalists and what I’d wish to achieve similarly with my own voice. He has a way of emoting that makes you hang onto every word he says, and I take that approach into account very often with my own material. 

You had a release show at Oblivion last night. How did it feel to play this material live after writing so much of it alone?

It felt really amazing. Kind of surreal actually. It’s always strange to listen to songs within a vacuum for so long as part of the writing and recording process and then to just play them live for a group of strangers who maybe haven’t even heard them before. It’s pretty liberating, honestly. It felt like I had finally come to the end of what I was trying to achieve with this body of work: I was finally at the crest of the work that was done, and now I can just sit back and enjoy playing it. 

What's next for Light Once Lost?

Hopefully a lot more! More shows, more music, touring hopefully. This is all really the beginning. There is a lot more art to be made with Light Once Lost, and a lot more people who need to experience it. I can’t wait for what comes next, and I hope others are just as excited as I am.